ABSTRACT
Explaining religion is a serious problem for any evolutionary account of human thought and society. All known human societies-past or present-bear the very substantial costs of religion’s material, emotional, and cognitive commitments to factually impossible, counterintuitive worlds. From an evolutionary standpoint, the reasons for why religion should not exist are patent: Religion is materially expensive and it is unrelentingly counterfactual and even counterintuitive. Religious practice is costly in terms of material sacrifice (at least one’s prayer time), emotional expenditure (inciting fears and hopes), and cognitive effort (maintaining both factual and counterintuitive networks of beliefs).
